Phranc, John Huggins & “A Little Snow” On Show At Craig Krull Gallery

Friday, 29 Nov 2013, 9:30:00 AM

Mitch James

Craig Krull Gallery this weekend opens a new exhibition Saturday featuring artists Phranc and John Huggins plus a group show of small snowscape paintings by seven artists.

An opening reception will be held Saturday, Dec. 7 from 4 pm to 6 pm.

Phranc, best known as The All-American Jewish Lesbian folksinger, is also a self-described “Cardboard Cobbler,” who fashions cardboard, paper, gouache, and thread into life-size, three-dimensional replications of everyday objects.

As a teenager, Phranc attended The Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, but she traces her obsession with cardboard back to childhood.

“From the time I sat in my first refrigerator box submarine, I knew the cardboard sea was for me,” Phranc says.

Her first exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery, “Phranc of California” (Summer of 2011), consisted of handcrafted beach paraphernalia, such as swimsuits, inflatable rafts, umbrellas and beach balls.

For her new exhibition, “Winter,” Phranc will exhibit painted paper and cardboard snowshoes, ski sweaters, ski pants, lift tickets, and even a shiny new red sled. In these trompe l’oeil re-creations of nostalgic winter items, Phranc remarks upon the reconstruction and idealization of memories.

John Huggins is a master of the challenging and exacting process known as Polaroid transfer (made even more challenging by Polaroid’s recent bankruptcy).

This process, in which wet Polaroid emulsion is transferred to another piece of paper, results in a grainy, desaturated image.

Huggins then enlarges the transfer into a 30”x40” archival pigment print, further enhancing the grain of the image as well as the fiber of the paper, thus resulting in a textured, tapestry quality.

All of the photographs in this exhibition were made from the photographer’s gondola on the lifts of Aspen. His compositions of horizonless, snow-covered mountain faces dotted with tiny skiers suggest a Zen simplicity of man in the context of nature.

In the most minimal images, it appears as if the tiny figures are actually skiing down the vertical surface of the paper.

To complement these two winter exhibitions, the gallery will present a group show entitled, “A Little Snow...” This exhibit of small snowscape paintings will include work by; Marc Bohne, Ann Lofquist, Robin Mitchell, Andrea Peters, Astrid Preston, Pamela Kendall Schiffer, and Nicole Strasburg.

Craig Krull Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave. B3 (Bergamot Station), Santa Monica. It is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 am to 5:30 pm, and Saturday from 11 am to 5:30 pm.